SIPA Community Sees Rise of Homegrown Apps

“Always wanted to learn how to code and never knew where to start? This is your chance to get the lowdown from an expert.”

The online ad, which appeared earlier this semester, announced the inaugural Seminar on Learning to Code taught by adjunct professor Sara-Jane Farmer on October 16. It’s just one more sign of the expansion of the app-creation field to SIPA.

This new career path is very rapidly is leaving its imprint in our school: competitions to create apps for development are being held, new courses dealing with digital technologies are on offer, and students are putting their ideas into practice.

Now, SIPASA is planning a survey to gauge student interest, and Dean Dan McIntyre of Academic Affairs told the Morningside Post the School could launch a course on coding as early as next semester.

“If we go ahead with such a course, the timing (whether Spring 2014 or Fall 2014) would depend on the structure of the course (weekend workshop, 1.5-point course or 3-point course), as well as availability of a qualified instructor and an appropriate room,” wrote McIntyre in response to an inquiry.

“SIPASA thinks a course to develop coding skills would be a great way to enhance the marketability of SIPA students to prospective employers,” said Sarah Goldman, a spokesperson for the student government body.

Part of this interest in the technological domain is due to market forces. The fast emergence of mobile-telephone applications has unleashed a great potential for students interested in development solutions. And, while much of the so-called app economy is devoted to applications providing games and leisure, many others are aimed at solving people´s needs and implementing public policies, the area of SIPA student expertise.

One example of the new breed of digital entrepreneurs is Ben Dean MIA ’14, creator of Zoomlocal.ly, a mobile-based platform for the Venezuelan municipality of Sucre. Dean spent the summer in Venezuela piloting his platform, which aims to provide citizens with a means to communicate with their government — about potholes or park furniture that require repair, for example, or projects they’d like to support with community funds.

“People won´t have to go to the town hall meetings to make their voices heard,” said Dean. “They will be able to post them on the platform.”

The number of SIPA courses in the field has multiplied since 2007, when adjunct professor Anne Nelson introduced New Media and Development Communication.

“At that time it was still an unexpected offering in an international affairs curriculum,” said Nelson, who said student interest has since grown at an even faster pace. “Many of our students have arrived at SIPA from the tech community, and many more have landed there upon graduation.”

This semester has seen the latest addition, Technology Initiatives in the Developing World, a course taught by Farmer and alumnus Eric Cantor MIA ’05, who since graduating has established Africa's first mobile-phone application laboratory, in Uganda.

Beyond the addition of courses, Nelson believes more resources and coordination are alo required, along with careful thought as to how to structure a new curriculum. “We are still in the early days of creating an academic environment to nurture it,” she said. “The related courses are spread out across the Columbia campus — in engineering, journalism, urban planning, computer science, public health and business, to start with. But SIPA and its partner programs possess a dazzling assembly of talent, ideas, and critical field experience.”

Some public policy schools, such as the University of Colorado, have introduced programs specializing in Communication Technology for Development. At SIPA, much of the initiative in this field has been student-led.

The New Media Task Force (NMTF), a student group with around 350 people on its mailing list, has been reaching out to tech innovators, creating hands-on supplements to the curriculum, and holding SIPA's first App Competition.

NMTF is sponsoring the second annual Technology for Development Pitch Competition on November 14. Open to all Columbia students, participants will present to a panel of industry judges and compete to win up to $1,500 in prizes. (Last year´s winner was a Teacher´s College team that pitched Monster Appetite, a game promoting awareness among children about calories in daily food items.)

Another important development for SIPA, Nelson said, was a recently announced cooperation project with the engineers behind the start-up mWater, which aims to improve water safety for millions of people. It involves a flexible, low-cost water potability testing kit, read by a mobile-phone app and entered into a data base.

“We're currently in discussions as to how SIPA students can advance their research and support their potential to scale,” said Nelson. “It's a fantastic educational opportunity, because it combines working with the app and the data collection with training and interactions with local authorities to create systemic improvements.”

But do SIPA students interested in developing apps need to become experts in computer science? Cantor says that’s a misconception, suggesting that every team working in the field needs a business leader who understands necessities but doesn’t have to be a technical person.

In Cantor’s class, students are expected to come up with an app project, but the emphasis is put on the management side. Along the way, students get familiar with the sector and the acronym-heavy technology language that scares many SIPA students.

“There is a fear of technology that is unjustified,” he said. “If you dig in a little bit you will demystify it.”

SIPA students interviewed for this feature agreed, suggesting that basic coding skills are helpful but going from there requires a lot of time and effort.

Christina Hawatmeh MIA ’14 is the founder of Protestify, an application that aims to give more visibility to protests everywhere by aggregating photos and videos uploaded by social media users worldwide. Hawathmeh said she is in the process of hiring an data scientist because she needs an expert to deal with photo and video coding. “My application needs a big data tool, and that is the hardest thing to create.” (Read more about Hawatmeh in the Morningside Post and Columbia Daily Spectator.)

Jesper Frant MPA-DP ’14, president of the New Media Task Force, said he had experience in technology and development but, in coming to SIPA, chose to focus on the management side of projects.

“I realized I was a lot behind the game in terms of coding and wanted to spend more time developing policies,” Frant said. “Today, A 14-year-old teen can know more of coding that I will ever do.”

Dean said the technology for his Venezuela-based citizen participation application was simple enough that he didn’t need an engineer. But the skills taught as SIPA came in handy in handling challenges related to regulation, financing, and garnering support from the municipality and the public.

“The technology is like the tip of the iceberg when building a business,” Dean said. “If you concentrate just on the technology, you’ll miss the larger picture.”

— Fernando Peinado MIA ’14

SIPA homepage carousel photo of Christina Hawatmeh by Waseem Mardini MIA ’14 / courtesy of Morningside Post